Haiti quietly marks quake's 3rd anniversary

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — President Michel Martelly urged Haitians to recall the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives in a devastating earthquake three years ago, marking the disaster's anniversary Saturday with a simple ceremony.

Former President Bill Clinton joined Martelly later in the day for a similarly quiet wreath-laying commemoration.

"Haitian people, hand in hand, we remember what has gone," Martelly said in the morning as a gigantic Haitian flag flew at half-staff before him on the front lawn of the former National Palace, a pile of tangled steel reinforcement bars nearby. "Hand in hand, we're remembering, we're remembering Jan. 12."

Martelly thanked other countries and international organizations for their help since the Jan. 12, 2010, disaster.

Clad in black, several dozen senior government officials gathered where the opulent white palace stood before it collapsed in the temblor and was later demolished. Foreign diplomats and Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, earlier named by Martelly as one of Haiti's goodwill ambassadors, were also there.

In the speech, Martelly announced a government contest seeking designs for a monument to honor those who died in the quake. He also said the government had just released a new construction code aimed at ensuring new buildings are seismically resistant in hopes of preventing the same kind of catastrophic damage in any future earthquake.

In the late morning, Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, joined Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe in placing a wreath at a mass burial site north of the capital of Port-au-Prince. None of the three spoke at the event.

Haiti's previous presidential administration said 316,000 people were killed but no one really knows how many died. The disaster displaced more than a million others.

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